‘La maleantada’

Although the former Calderón-era official has already been found guilty, the aim of his letter is clear: accuse anyone in order to reduce his sentence.

Genaro García Luna has resorted to the final media gambit to avoid a life sentence for drug trafficking in three weeks: a desperate letter in which he claims that President López Obrador’s ties to traffickers are “public knowledge.”

Although García Luna, a former high-ranking official during Felipe Calderón’s presidency, has already been convicted, the clear intent of his letter is to accuse anyone possible in hopes of reducing his sentence and negotiating with sectors of the U.S. government eager to tarnish AMLO's reputation.

The DEA, for example, still holds a grudge after its agents were barred from operating in Mexican territory.
In his letter, García Luna claims the DEA offered him a deal, though he had always denied this when asked. He also fails to mention that drug trafficker Reynaldo Zambada García, “El Rey” — one of the witnesses against him — denied ever giving money to LópezObrador when he was mayor of Mexico City.

Additionally, García Luna omits the fact that in the summer of 2022, Brooklyn prosecutors presented a November 2020 recording in which García Luna ordered the assassination of El Rey. There’s no mention that the “recordings, videos, photos” supposedly proving AMLO's ties to the narco were never presented at García Luna's trial. Nor does he address the fact that he was charged with international distribution, possession, and importation of cocaine (50 tons), being an associate of a criminal enterprise, and perjury.

He also neglects to discuss the kidnapping gang he protected when he was considered a “super cop.” Instead, he insists his “honor remains intact,” that he has “committed no crime,” and presents as proof of AMLO’s guilt an alleged letter from Ismael Zambada implicating Rubén Rocha Moya, the overwhelmed governor of Sinaloa in the ongoing local narco war.

In a seemingly offhand remark, García Luna touches on judicial reform. What kind of prisoner starts politicking just days before being sentenced to a minimum of 20 years? This letter follows the recent reappearance of former president Ernesto Zedillo, who has been critical of popular elections for judges. Zedillo, widely considered the architect of the Fobaproa bank bailout, is the same president who removed Supreme Court justices with the stroke of a pen and vowed to use his congressional majority whenever necessary.

In September 2012, Zedillo received immunity from the U.S. government, which shielded him from any consequences of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' (IACHR) potential ruling on his responsibility in the Acteal massacre, where a group of Mexican soldiers armed the paramilitaries that committed the killings in a Chiapas community.

Unlike the civil war that has erupted in Culiacán and other hubs of “gore capitalism,” the civil war in post-neoliberal Mexico, which has raged for at least six years, isn’t fought with bullets but with narratives.

On the right, the stories are familiar: claims of a “narco-president,” accusations of authoritarian drift, the assertion that Claudia Sheinbaum is inheriting “a cursed reform,” fears over nearshoring being at risk, U.S. intervention looming, an impending economic crisis, and the threat of reforms destroying the country.

These catastrophic, fictional, and cynical narratives are spun by figures like García Luna and Zedillo — the ‘maleantada,’ as López Obrador calls them. As AMLO himself says, the only one missing now is Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

@ELALEXALMAZAN

Información originalmente publicada en El Heraldo de México.